


That Middle Watch

by TiamatsChild



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Insomnia, Post-Canon, discussion of non-sexual coercion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-19
Updated: 2016-04-19
Packaged: 2018-06-03 04:01:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6595837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TiamatsChild/pseuds/TiamatsChild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey doesn't sleep. Finding Luke Skywalker doesn't in itself change that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Middle Watch

It didn't surprise Rey when, on the first night she spent in Luke Skywalker's home, she couldn't sleep.

Rey couldn't remember a time when sleep came to her readily, reliably. She remembered being small, too small to scavenge on her own because she didn't know enough, and lying awake crying because something was frozen inside, something wouldn't budge, somehow she couldn't sleep, she couldn't. She wanted to.

It wasn't nightmares. Rey didn't have many of those, not really. She rarely slept deeply enough for dreaming. She didn't fear it, and she didn't think she would even if she did have nightmares. Nightmares, she thought in the hidden space of her mind, would be a small price for sleep. 

It wasn't nightmares. It was something small and hard and tight inside her that refused to let her go, that would not loosen, that stopped her sleeping, kept her awake. Even when she was so exhausted that she did sleep it kept her on the surface, frantic to swim deeper, but tethered too firmly to get there. Bobbing awake every hour, every half hour, never enough, shot through with gray and golden light. 

Rey wasn't surprised to be awake in her bedroll on Luke Skywalker's hearth but she was – frustrated. Frustration mixed with exhaustion was an explosive mix: Rey knew that. It could get you killed, she'd seen it kill more than once, when someone answered back when they shouldn't have, or grabbed a component when it wasn't ready to come out, or swung hard, too hard, too fast, and the person they'd been frustrated with went down, empty and limp, no more life in them. Rey didn't want to be exhausted and frustrated around other people: she wanted to sleep. She just wanted to sleep. She wanted to sleep.

She curled her hands in on themselves, tight, not a proper fist, just tight until her short, blunt nails were digging into her palms. Kylo Ren had put her to sleep. He hadn't knocked her out: she knew what that felt like. He hadn't just forced her into unconsciousness. He'd _put her to sleep_. 

She wasn't frustrated anymore, like a connection clicking into place, like the moment of a sandstorm hitting, she was _furious_. She was breathing deep and strong, her heart pumping blood as if for a race. It felt like something outside herself, something too large for her, but she knew it wasn't, any more than her loneliness was, any more than the way she felt when she looked at Finn was. It was only hers. Her feelings, which were her as much as her thoughts or her hands. 

He'd put her to sleep. His mind had swept over hers and smoothed it out like someone shutting the open eyes of the dead. It hadn't hurt at all. It had been deep and silent, no flashes of light on the horizon, and she had been down further, she knew, than she had been since she was six years old.

She wanted him in front of her so she could smash his head in this time. 

“Rey? Are you all right?” Luke Skywalker's voice was hushed and warm, as if he weren't quite sure she was awake. Rey liked his voice, but she didn't really like people who weren't Finn directly addressing her, even with several weeks to get used to it happening. It was distressing, it sent lightning through her – brace yourself, her body said, fight or run. 

She sat up, instantly straight backed, her blankets pooling in her lap. She didn't know what to say, or how to say it. Rey wanted so much to be honest with him, to tell him the truth. 

“I can't sleep,” Rey said. 

Luke Skywalker sat down on the floor on the other side of the hearth, crossing his legs like a mechanic. Rey supposed he was a mechanic. That was in the stories too. _Go on_ , his eyes said.

“I don't sleep,” Rey said, which was a secret, which Kylo Ren had pulled out of her like it was a confidence, like it meant he knew her, like there was something _between_ them and she wanted to bite him, take his fingers or his tongue - “Not enough. I don't.”

Luke Skywalker nodded, slow, and his eyes said, _That's not all_ , and it was amazingly unsubtle for someone who wasn't actually saying a word. But he wasn't taking and he wasn't even asking for anything from her, not really, he was just. It was something he knew. As the rest was something she knew.

“Kylo Ren put me to sleep,” Rey said, as if the words were heavy, as if she were back on Jakku, climbing the internal structure of a star destroyer, and every movement mattered.

“He shouldn't have done that to you,” Luke Skywalker answered, solemn and still, not moving at all. 

It was nothing Rey hadn't known already, she knew that, she knew. But it hurt anyway, the way help did, the way it had when Finn came to find her, when Maz Kanata told her her secret that wasn't a secret, that anyone could see. It hurt, like gratitude did, and relief, and Rey found herself crying silently.

She shut her eyes and swallowed hard.

They sat there together on two sides of the hearth for a long, long moment, neither speaking. Both silent. Rey didn't sob. She breathed deep and hard, still, again, but she wasn't sobbing. It wouldn't have hurt her pride if she did, she simply – wasn't. 

Her rage ebbed. The last of the sandstorm, the fine particles flowing away, almost controlled, almost deliberate. It wasn't gone. Somewhere she was still angry, or could be angry again, she wasn't sure, but it wasn't paramount any more. She felt hallowed. The shape in a dune the wind left behind. Carved out by grief.

It felt a lot better than before.

At last she blinked her eyes open, and lifted her chin, and said to Luke Skywalker, who was still quiet, gravely attentive, present without being pressing: “I won't be able to sleep.”

“We can work on that,” he told her. “I have a few ideas already. I'll work on more for you.”

Rey would take anything that helped. Anything. Anything except that slide of another mind over hers. She would fight that, she knew, whether she intended to or not. No matter who it was. No matter how warned she was. 

She nodded.

Luke Skywalker caught her gaze with his, held her, as deliberate and steady and absurdly kind as General Organa reaching out to hold her in the _Falcon_ 's shadow. “Thank you for telling me,” he said. 

There could only be one answer to that. It was good that it was an honest answer.

“Thank you,” Rey said, reaching for an echo of that same deliberation, that kindness. “For hearing me.”


End file.
